cook_county_public_defenderfandomcom-20200214-history
Assistant Public Defender burnout
It took me months to get over it, to find my way back. But eventually, after some drinking, some sleeping, some soul searching, and a little vacation, I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and devised the three rules that I decided could ensure my longevity as a public defender: trust yourself, pace yourself, forgive yourself. Given the volume of cases, a public defender has to make an almost unfathomable number of snap decisions during the course of the day - take the plea or get a trial date, deal with the DA or go straight to the judge, send a client to the grand jury or just wait for trial. Every one of those decisions has potentially catastrophic consequences for a client, and being an effective decision maker requires a preternatural confidence. That's the first part - trust yourself, trust your instincts. Generally they're good. Second, remember that no matter how hard you work and no matter how efficient you are, no amount of work will ever be enough. There is an inexhaustible supply of clients, and almost every single one of them will need more than you have to give. There is never going to be enough money, enough time, or enough compassion to do much more than triage. Even when you do focus on someone, their needs are usually so beyond your capacities that no good will come of the effort. Accept this as a condition of your life and work as hard as you can for as long as you can every single day, and then when it’s finally time to go home, accept that you've done all you can do - pace yourself. The problem is that with all that volume, with all those decisions, you will screw up. It's inevitable. Every public defender is going to make mistakes, and those mistakes are going to take a terrible, inexcusable, and unforgivable toll on the lives of the clients you love. It's just going to happen. You will err, and someone will go to jail because of it. Somehow, to survive in the work, you need to find a way to forgive the unforgivable, to accept and acknowledge that you've screwed up, and to recognize the price of that screw up without becoming so paralyzed that you can no longer do the work. As bad as you may think you are, clients need you - they are desperate for decent lawyers. Don't be your own worst enemy. Forgive yourself- or you'll burn out in two years. 3 rules for public defenders from David Feige’s Indefensible pg. 253-254 This is, obviously, from David Feige's Indefensible book. However, I would like Assistant Public Defenders to consider the following: We often come into the job because of sensibilities and notions of larger issues of justice, but become challenged by the case loads and the oppressive sociological issues at play, which leads to burnout. Years or decades into the job, we begin to realize that the effectiveness we have as a lawyer for our client is as a LAWYER and advocate for THIS CLIENT vs. the system overall. We begin to realize our effective role is as a lawyer, NOT a lobbyist! That's our leader's job! Ethnomethodology/Ethnography is the study of how things are actually done. David Sudnow studied how Assissant Public Defenders actually assess cases, and get outcomes. That study is here: http://www.douri.sh/.../Sudnow-NormalCrimes... Related: Joy and McMunical studied whether Assistant Public Defenders get better outcomes than private attorneys (yes) and why, here: http://www.americanbar.org/.../sp12_ethics.authcheckdam.pdf Better practices can be implemented by Public Defender Offices to help junior attorneys learn the skills, understandings and the better outcomes of senior attorneys, based on how Assistant Public Defenders learn how to Win and Avoid Losing, here: http://eprints.rclis.org/13399/1/CoP_JASIS_preprint.pdf The overall points are that our actual advantages are: (1) the breadth of experience from our caseload to get better outcomes in the future for individual clients; and (2) our community of Public Defenders for collegiate and senior advice -we're not alone! In general, the biggest enemy I've found to being effective is usually my ego.